A QUESTION TO FIDEL CASTRO, THE AUTHOR OF TWO BOOKS.
By Migdalia Rosado, Tamarindo 34 Human Rights Group, for Cuba Free Press.

Havana.- "Never had such a pile of oppressive deviations from the rules been
committed against any accused," complained Fidel Castro in his book called
"History Will Absolve Me." However, in his first book, "The Fruitful
Prison," Fidel Castro, related quite a different story about the treatment
he supposedly received in prison.

Castro wrote that he served 72 days in prison with all the comforts of home.
He practiced sports, cooked to his own liking, held meetings, gave classes
and wrote and mailed letters. And when he was transferred from an outlying
prison to one in Havana, the transfer order directed clearly that he be
separated from the common prisoners. He was allowed to stay with the rest of
his fellow attackers on the Moncada barracks. According to Castro himself,
these prisoners did not have any reason to envy a room at Hotel National of
Cuba.

He and his group had ambushed the Moncada army barracks in Santiago, Cuba,
an act in which a number of soldiers who were taken by surprise lost their
lives.

When Castro wrote about oppressive deviations from the rules, he was also
describing much prison treatment under his rule. Cuba Free Press here
describes some of this:

* Victor Rolando Arroyo received six months in prison for buying toys to
give to poor Cuban children for Three Kings' Day, on Jan. 6, 2000. Moreover,
Arroyo bought the toys at an authorized government store, where there was no
limit on the toys that could be bought. The store manager testified to that.
The regime convicted Arroyo anyway.

* "The Group of Four" signers of the document "The Homeland Belongs To All
of Us" were sentenced to between three and five years in prison for having
written and released their document. It analyzes the situation in which Cuba
finds itself today.

* Maritza Lugo is kept in windowless prison cells for reasons not even made
public.

Cuba Free Press asks him who wrote, "Never had such a pile of oppressive
deviations from the rules been committed against any accused," how would you
catalogue what is happening to these five prisoners if it had happened to
you?